“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Those “properties” are the faculties of the imagination, creativity, telepathy, clairvoyance, and dreaming, as well as the functions of logic and reason. You know that you dream. You know that you think. Those are direct experiences. (Pause.) Anytime you use instruments to probe into the nature of reality, you are looking at a kind of secondary evidence, no matter how excellent the instruments may be. The subjective evidence of dreaming, for example, is far more “convincing” and irrefutable than is the evidence for an expanding universe, black holes, or even atoms and molecules themselves. Although instruments can indeed be most advantageous in many ways, they still present you with secondary rather than primary tools of investigation—and they distort the nature of reality far more than the subjective attributes of thoughts, feelings, and intuitions do.

Those experiences are usual. They have been reported by peoples of all kinds and in all ages, and they represent a common-sense kind of knowledge that is frowned upon by the men of learned universities. Throughout this book we will often be talking about experiences that are encountered in one way or another by most people, but are not given credence to on the part of the established fields of knowledge. Therefore, dreams will be considered throughout the book in various capacities as they are related through genetics, reincarnation, culture, and private life. We will also be considering the matter of free will and its role in individual value fulfillment.

(A closing note, added following Seth’s completion of his sessions for Dreams on February 8, 1982:

When I began putting together Seth’s dictation for Dreams, and adding Jane’s and my own notes, plus excerpts from other relevant sessions, it soon became obvious that the entire work was going to be too long for one volume. There would be publishing difficulties having to do with sheer bulk—with the cost of typesetting, with binding such a thick book, with marketing and price, and so forth. So with the help of our editor, Tam Mossman, and others at Prentice-Hall, the decision was made to publish Dreams in two volumes. At first I was sorry for the reader’s sake to think of Dreams being interrupted, yet glad for myself, for in addition to presenting Seth’s book dictation I was given the space in which to develop those other personal and secular themes of Seth’s, Jane’s, and my own that I think add even more dimensions of meaning to Dreams.

This time, however, unlike the case with “Unknown” Reality, there won’t be any two-year wait between the production of the two volumes for Dreams—only a few months at the most. In the meantime, here are Seth’s chapter headings for the second volume, to show the direction his material takes:)

(Seth used Session 909 as a bridge between chapters 6 and 7 in Dreams. This means that now the session also serves as a connective—a very effective lure, say—between volumes 1 and 2. Indeed, in retrospect it also seems as though Seth, that “energy personality essence,” planned it that way! And Jane and I look forward with intense interest to the final version of Dreams, for as always this work will be as revealing and educational for us as it will be for anybody else. I thank each reader for his or her patience in accepting the publication of Dreams in two volumes. Robert F. Butts.)